Cruz contains Open API's for North and Southbound Integration
Integration with Third-party Software
Cruz Operations Center (CruzOC) has many integration points and capabilities that are provided as part of the standard product. The product and been successfully integrated with many name-brand and proprietary applications, for a variety of objectives, including both northbound and southbound integrations.
The integration approach depends on Southbound vs. Northbound.
Southbound Integration (SBI): Southbound integration refers to the product integrating with lower -level components. CruzOC supports this type of integration through its componentized architecture allowing integration solutions to be plugged into standard product offerings without compromising the core software package. Southbound integrations have a natural dependency upon the third-party API and semantic. The specific dependency is isolated to the integration component. The integration component is responsible for exposing the 3rd party behavior and data through standard application frameworks and APIs within CruzOC. It's also responsible for packaging any third-party-specific protocol that may be required for integration. As a result, the integration can utilize REST/SOAP/HTTP/XML/SNMP/CLI/SSH/ CSV/WMI/WBEM/ HEAT/JMS/JNI/JAVA/NETRCONF or any other protocol as necessary for communication. Typical examples of SBI in Cruz includes integration to network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, servers, operating systems etc.
Northbound Integration (NBI): Northbound integration refers to integration and communication with a higher-level component. While there are a variety of ways for external systems to interact with CruzOC, we generally recommend REST as the preferred method. The Cruz REST API exposes all our major application frameworks and can easily be extended. The API is documented utilizing swagger, a well-known industry-accepted API framework. Other methods include SOAP, Web Hook for events, and as a last resort, direct JAVA integration.
Examples of Southbound Integration
Device Drivers – CruzOC device drivers are individual components. Since each device vendor has it is own operating system, custom code is written to take advantage of its supported interfaces. Typically, these are SSH, TELNET, SNMP, HTTP for switches, routers, or firewalls. For Windows and Linux OS, WBEM or WMI are used. In some cases, a device may only have a REST interface so custom code is written to use the capabilities available through the REST API. The Dell Technologies Unity storage device is an example of integration to the device's Unisphere OS. Other drivers include VxRail, vCenter, Sonic. etc., refer to the full device driver matrix here.
Phone Home Integration – CruzOC integrates with a Dell Technologies log database via REST API to push CruzOC managed device data for device performance, inventory, and other detailed data to a remote database. Dell Technologies then uses the data to correlate NMS-related data to other data collected directly for network devices.
Openstack Integration – The CruzOC Openstack component is part of the NFV feature suite and responsible for managing and monitoring Openstack deployments and exposing the ability to remotely invoke virtualization capabilities from within CruzOC. The integration takes advantage of Openstack's REST API via the Openstack4j integration library for Java.
*Open Manage Essentials (OME) is third-party software that manages servers. Rest integration for CruzOC adds the ability to pull all OME inventory, data, and alerts into CruzOC so the server can be managed from a single application.
Redfish Integration – Redfish is a DMTF standard and a RESTful API for managing servers. It is intended to be a secure replacement for IPMI-over-LAN to manage servers. The Redfish API is an open industry-standard specification that provides a way to access and manage servers through its Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) (i.e., IDRAC, XCC, ILO, IMC, etc.). Some vendors, like Dell Technologies, HPE, Supermicro, etc., have extended the Redfish API with custom extensions to fit their hardware. Our implementation supports the common capabilities across all vendors as well as custom extensions. For instance, the Dell Technology servers BMC is called iDRAC. Other vendors are also supported but implementation and adherence to the Redfish API specifications have not been consistent.
ServiceNow Integration – ServiceNow is a ticketing tool used to manage technology service management tasks. It provides a centralized service catalog for personnel to request technology services or information about applications and processes that are being used in the system. The ServiceNow URL is embedded for access from CruzOC. The CruzOC integration lets users define the events, alarms, or syslogs to escalate to ServiceNow where a ticket is dynamically created. The integration also features automatic or manual forwarding of emails of events, alerts, logs, etc.; automatic and selective northbound forwarding of raw alerts/syslogs based on automation rule criteria; automated alert forwarding to the ServiceNow REST interface; and Rest-based Actions to get/update ticket information.
Thycotic Secret Server – This integration allows users to bypass storing the authentication in CruzOC like username/password. Users setup authentications or secrets in the Thycotic Secret Server for specific resources and users. CruzOC uses Thycotic REST services to retrieve authentication from the Thycotic Secret Server instead of using the CruzOC Authentication Services.
Warranty Reporting Integration – Dell Technologies managed switches and servers have “Service tags” that track product support and warranty information. The information is tracked in a Dell Technologies product database. When devices are discovered in CruzOC, it will also collect the “Service Tag”. Using REST, CruzOC has been integrated to query the Dell Technologies database and retrieve the corresponding warranty and support information. As a result, CruzOC can provide alerts related to warranty expiration and even direct link back to the vendor for renewal.
Restful Actions – Restful Actions are user-customizable Actions and allow direct REST scripts to be created and sent to a REST Server. With these Actions, CruzOC accepts user data and includes that in the REST API payload as JSON scripts. With this type of Action, JSON scripts (which include parameters, not just JSON) can support REST operations: GET, PUT, POST, and so on. You can specify a target URL and authentication. CruzOC maps any resulting data back to the user data object associated with the Action.
Ruckus SmartZone - CruzOC can discover SmartZone controllers and via REST pull information or configure Smartzone and Ruckus AP's managed under Smartzone. Data from SZ AP's are correlated to switches where AP's are attached.
Examples of Northbound Integration
Link and Launch – A third-party application required direct access to performance data and a portlet view provided by CruzOC. Integration to the front-end web server allowed the remote application to invoke a URL provided via the integration API and display the necessary performance data.
SNMP Forwarding – This a standard product feature that allows SNMP trap forwarding to a northbound system.
Order Management – CruzOC was integrated with a third-party service ordering system to provide full automation of a Virtual CPE service which included VPN and internet access. Through implementation, an order could be generated by calling CruzOC to deploy a full-service configuration on target element(s) to bring up a network service.
Single Source of Truth (SST)- Third party commercial products or home grown solutions may aggregate information and activities to the SST platform . Cruz Offers integration capabilities to support NBI to these systems.
Example Integrations in Progress
- ServiceNow – Bi-directional support to allow updates from ServiceNow to flow into CruzOC.
- OpenManage Enterprise
- Swordfish – API to manage Server and Storage hardware via REST API
- OKTA integration
If you have questions regarding current or future integrations, please contact your account manager.